Switching Sides
by CrystalOfEllinon
Summary: Yet another story from me involving ninja GASP! Storm Shadow, as we all know, has jumped sides more than a few times. Well, how did the Joes first react when the man who's job description used to be stabbing them started working with them? M to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

"Can we trust him?" Hawk's eyebrows were furrowed, and he was leaning forwards over his desk. "You have to understand how this looks to me…a known enemy of the United States suddenly turns up on my doorstep, claiming he's left Cobra and wants to aid me instead, giving me a story that sounds completely unbelievable. Except that you seem to believe it." The general frowned. "I trust you, Snake. You know that. But I've got a man in my brig who has been responsible for the deaths of more than a few men under my command, and who has consistently worked to undermine the United States Government for years. I'm more than a little tempted to send Scarlett down to the brig with a firearm and let her finish what she tried to do with that knife."

*Tommy did what he had to.* Snake Eyes signed. *It was his right, as heir to the clan, to seek revenge for the murder of his clan master and blood relative. He entered the employ of the only man who seemed to know anything about the murder, despite great personal misgivings.* The ninja paused. *I've spoken with him. He is not lying; he didn't murder our master, and he has left Cobra. He's a good man, sir. A good man who has done bad things, but still a good man, and even during his years with the Commander he didn't break his code of honor. He could have killed me more than once over the years. He didn't. He's also refrained from killing other Joes, even when he could have and doing so would have been less personally risky for him.*

Hawk rubbed a hand over his eyes. "He's still killed an awful lot of people for Cobra, Snake."

*I know, sir. Like I said; he's done bad things. But he is telling the truth.*

"Well, you know him better than anyone else alive, and my bosses are foaming at the mouth at the prospect of getting a defector from Cobra-_if_ he's trustworthy-to work with my intelligence team. They practically wet themselves when I said the word 'ninja'. Your exploits have made quite an impression at the Pentagon, you know." The general sighed. "I don't claim to understand ninja…but he said something about an oath of service, and he flashed that tattoo when he said it. I know you well enough to know that that must mean something."

Snake Eyes smiled. *If he swore an oath of service to you on the honor and mark of our clan, you can trust him to the death. He's never broken that oath.*

Hawk looked skeptical. "He served the Commander for years, and now he's here."

*He didn't break his oath. He swore to serve Cobra until he learned who killed the Hard Master.* Snake Eyes signs were slightly faster than usual, which Hawk recognized as a sign that something had managed to upset the famously even-tempered ninja. Snake Eyes' old friend had always been a touchy subject around the commando, of course, and even when he'd been trying to kill Storm Shadow the ninja hadn't well tolerated verbal attacks on his one-time sword brother.

Snake continued. *When he found out who it was, his oath no longer applied. Apparently two dozen vipers, nine Dreadnoks, eleven Crimson Guards, two Iron Grenadiers, and three Red Hand ninja died protecting the Commander and Zartan when Tommy found out that Zartan was the shooter. They got away in a chopper… barely.* The ninja scowled under his mask. *Sir, you know I respect you. I'd follow almost any order you gave me to the death. But if I get my hands on Zartan, you will not be getting a prisoner.*

"Fair enough." Hawk leaned back in his chair. "Well, he hasn't escaped from the brig. I'd like to think that is because of my crack security, but I know better. Still, the fact he hasn't simply left is a good indication that he intends to cooperate." The general sighed again. "I know how good he is…and I would very much like that skill on my team. I'm placing a great deal of trust on your word here, Snake."

*I know, sir.*

"I'd better not regret this... I'll give him a chance. I've already had about twenty people talk to Duke, worrying that if I give him a shot he'll be assigned to their bunkrooms. The quartermasters tell me that there's an empty room across the hall from you. I want an eye kept on him. If he does anything –_anything-_ even remotely suspicious, you will tell me _immediately_. No, on second thought you will apprehend him, and only after he is secured you will report to me. Do I make myself clear?"

*Yes, sir.* But Snake Eyes was smiling.

"I'll speak to the team. I'd rather no one decided to take a swing at him, but I've a nasty feeling someone will end up getting treated by Lifeline and Doc anyway."

*I doubt he'll start anything. And he can take care of himself.*

"I know he can. I also know that he's a ninja, and if someone tries to land a punch he's not going to let them, and will probably painfully discourage the perpetrator from trying anything ever again."

*Non-lethally.* Snake Eyes pointed out. *Tommy has more than enough control to put someone down without hurting them.*

"Duke is going to start eating Tylenol for breakfast."

*Probably.*

It was a few hours before Hawk finished plowing through the mountain of paperwork on his desk. He had more than he liked on a regular day; when he was dealing with a defector from a known terrorist organization, there was even _more._ And then there were calls to be made, faxes to send, and the Jugglers to smooth-talk.

He had a private fantasy about personally introducing some of the Jugglers to the ninja under his command. Or, even better, just landing one really, really good left hook across the jaw of each of the bastards.

When he finally made his way down to the brig, it was almost evening. A dozen greenshirts were on guard duty, along with Grunt and Short Fuze. All fourteen men were eying one cell nervously, as if afraid to take their eyes off of it for a single moment. Hawk was sure that one of the greenshirts was only blinking one eye at a time.

He shook his head. This was _so_ not what he had expected when he'd first showed up for Basic, years ago. Survive his first combat experience, check. Work his way up in the ranks, check. Get assigned command of a select team of highly trained professionals who turned out to be a bunch of psyche ward escapees, check. Accept an oath of service from a ninja who'd spent a good chunk of the last few years trying to stab his squad of lunatics…hadn't seen that one coming.

Storm Shadow was lounging on the cot in his cell, apparently completely at ease despite the thick bandages on one shoulder. Hawk sighed. Snake Eyes also seemed to be able to make himself comfortable no matter the situation or surroundings; this skill must be a ninja trait. However, projecting an aura of absolute self-confidence and looking like he owned the cellblock and just _chose_ to stay behind bars was, Hawk thought, probably something that only Thomas Arashikage could successfully pull off.

Of course, he probably had just chosen to stay put. The man had escaped Alcatraz; if he really wanted to, Hawk was sure the ninja would have relatively little trouble getting out of a military brig. They'd disarmed him, of course (and good _god_ they'd pulled enough weapons off of the ninja to outfit a small platoon, if of course that platoon was partial to bladed weapons) but Hawk knew his own commando well enough to know that ninja could be very, _very _inventive.

The ninja rolled to his feet and came to attention when Hawk walked in. There was a shuffle as the men on guard duty snapped to attention as well.

"At ease." Hawk said automatically.

Storm Shadow leaned against the bars of his cell. "So. You've decided to accept my offer."

Creepy. Just _creepy._ "How…"

"You don't have my sword brother shadowing you. If you'd chosen to try and send me to trial or just put a bullet into me, you would have had him watching your back."

Oh. Well, that was logical enough. "You'll be placed on probationary status. I will have you watched, and if you make _one_ move that even makes me suspect that you're playing me for a fool, you will go to trial as a criminal. If I let you live that long."

A slight smile. "You've nothing to fear. I swore to serve you if you were to accept me onto the team; I will not break that oath. But you should know; I'd no intention of going to trial. If you'd refused my offer, I would have left and gone after Zartan and the Commander on my own."

Hawk narrowed his eyes. "I'm still leery. Snake Eyes has vouched for you, and I trust him. But the reason I'm giving you a chance is because I know a little about ninja. I suspected that an oath like the one you offered wasn't a laughing matter, and Snake Eyes confirmed that. So, I've this question; having sworn to serve me, if I was to order you to take the gun from me and shoot yourself, what would you do?"

Storm Shadow looked him in the eye. "I would ask you where you wanted me to put the bullet. And then I would hope that that medic who patched up my shoulder was as good with bullet wounds."

Hawk inspected the ninja carefully. He was a good judge of character, and he generally knew when someone was telling a bold-faced lie. Ninja were good at lying, but…well, there was something there that seemed sincere.

"Yes, I believe you would." He nodded slowly.

"I am sorry."

Hawk blinked at the words; they weren't something he'd ever expected to hear from the famously lethal Cobra agent. "What?"

"I've done things I'm not proud of." Storm actually sighed. "I did what I had to; my allegiance has always been to my clan first, and I did what I did for the Arashikage. I always tried to avoid killing soldiers if possible, but…well, I know I've sent good men to early graves. And for that, I am sorry."

Hawk eyed the other man for a long moment. "I'm not quite ready to forgive you for the men under my command who died, but thank you."

"Understandable."

Hawk stepped over to the wall and hit the locking mechanism for the ninja's cell. "I'll speak to the team, but I can't promise you that no one will try to take a little revenge behind my back."

Storm Shadow stepped out of the confines of his cell. The greenshirts and two Joes backed up a step. Hawk scowled at them. "He's in my service. You don't have to like him, but you will at least treat him with respect. Am I clear?"

"Sir." They didn't relax much, though.

"Don't worry about me." Storm Shadow shrugged. "I can take care of myself."

"I know you can. I'm worried about _them._"

"I promise you, sir. I won't start anything, and I won't be goaded into a fight." Storm paused. "If someone tries to take a shot at me, I'll neutralize the situation with minimal force."

"Minimal force meaning…"

"I won't break anything too major." The ninja grinned.

Hawk sighed, feeling distinctly that he'd probably come to associate that look with an increase in incident forms…but, then, well, _ninja._ "Good enough."


	2. Chapter 2

The briefing the next morning went about as well as expected. Hawk called the team together just after PT had let out; The Joes and assorted other relevant staff packed themselves into the motor pool, which was the largest open space the Pit had. Judging from some of the slightly grumpy faces, the team was _not_ happy that their breakfast was being delayed, however briefly.

An army marches on its stomach, after all. Some of the most spectacular debacles in military history had occurred over interruption or unexpected and unpopular changes in rations. Still, no one _dared_ say anything; the Wrath of Hawk was a legendary force, to be avoided at all costs. They fell into ranks and shut their mouths, waiting semi-patently.

Hawk eyed them and sighed. He had a private bet going with Duke over just how many pieces would be pulled when the Joes caught sight of Storm Shadow.

Might as well get this over with; he crossed his arms and eyed his team. "Right. You're all wondering why you aren't in the mess hall destroying some breakfast. Well, as of last night, we have a new transfer to the team."

He saw BeachHead's eyebrows furrow in the front rank. New recruits usually went through the Sergeant Major; it was rare for Hawk to get personally involved. Hawk eyed the big Ranger; Beach was probably carrying at least two handguns, and he'd eat his general's stars if the man didn't manage to pull both in about another twenty seconds. "This particular addition to the team is a rather unique case; he's a defector from Cobra, and will be working most closely with those of you in intelligence and covert ops. You've probably all run into him before, likely not under very peaceful circumstances."

Scarlett was frowning, and Hawk saw the redhead's eyes dart towards the impassive visored figure in black standing next to her. Snake Eyes didn't flinch, which was impressive, since the glare Scarlett was leveling at him could probably have melted lead.

"I understand that you are not going to welcome our recent enemy with open arms. That's perfectly fine. But you will be polite, and you will respect him. Anyone who fails to comply with this order will be dealt with by me _personally_. Is this clear?"

There was a chorus of "Yes, Sirs!"

"Good." Hawk turned and gestured at the doorway; a white-clad figure sauntered out. "Joes, this is Storm Shadow, your new teammate."

There was a flurry of motion; no less than eighteen sidearms were leveled at the ninja in about half a second, including two by BeachHead. Hawk scowled and bellowed. "STAND DOWN! What part of 'TEAM MEMBER' didn't you understand! STAND DOWN, DAMMIT!"

His voice echoed off the walls of the motor pool; Hawk didn't yell often, but he was just as good as BeachHead at it when he wanted to be. The guns dropped, rather reluctantly. Scarlett and BeachHead actually looked like they were snarling. Storm Shadow hadn't flinched. He stood at ease, perfectly calm. Of course, he was probably used to the Joes pointing firearms at him.

"I take it you do remember him." Hawk was still glaring at his team. "I'll chalk that reaction up to 'instinct.' Anyway, as I said, he has left Cobra. He has reasons, and if you want to know them I suggest you ask him, because I don't have the time to play storyteller. Suffice to say that I believe him and am willing to trust him, and so does Snake Eyes. He will be assigned a private bunkroom, so quit looking so worried. He will attend PT with the rest of the team, starting tomorrow. I strongly recommend that no one decide to take a bit of revenge into their own hands, for your own good. I don't want any of my soldiers being harassed, but more importantly you all know very well that he'll wipe the floor with you. I've told him to leave you mostly intact, but I'm sure he'll figure out some sort of suitable humiliation for anyone stupid or rash enough to try anything. Any questions?"

There was a long stretch of sullen silence.

"Good. Any questions or concerns, please see me, Duke, or Flint. Dismissed."

He watched them filter out. Eighteen…damn. He'd guessed at least twenty five. Duke would be looking for his twenty as soon as breakfast was over. Probably while smirking.

Oh, well. Considering the migraines Hawk was sure his Top Sergeant would be nursing soon enough, he wouldn't begrudge him a fairly won smirk at his CO.

There was a great deal of muttering at breakfast; Storm Shadow was given a good fifteen feet of elbow room by most of the team. This didn't seem to bother the ninja.

Snake Eyes was the one exception. He strode right up to the white-clad ninja, who was examining the proffered food on the steam tables. Storm turned to eye the commando.

*I knew Hawk would give you a chance.* Snake Eyes smiled. *It's good to see you _not_ trying to kill me. It's been too long.*

"Yeah. Sorry about the throwing spike to the back last month." Storm looked slightly sheepish. "But, well, you were throttling Bludd…and if anyone is going to strangle him to death, _I _want to be the one who gets to."

Snake Eyes shrugged. *I carry the antidote to the Arashikage poison whenever I might run into you, so no harm done. How's the shoulder?*

"The one you shot me in last month or the one your woman stabbed me in?"

*Both.*

"Your bullet went right through, so no big deal. Knife wound is healing; Red's pretty good, isn't she? Not many people can get a knife in me. Even when I'm not expecting it."

Snake Eyes smiled. *She ought to be. She trains with me.*

"I thought she must…oh, _gods_." The ninja's eyes lit up. "Are those _eggs?_ Actual, didn't-come-out-of-a-box-as-powder _eggs?_ And is that _fruit?_"

Snake Eyes raised an eyebrow.

"Trust me. If you'd seen what they serve in the Cobra mess halls, you'd be crying with joy. How's the coffee here?"

*You can stab it and not dent the surface.*

Storm Shadow sighed happily. "I should have left Cobra _years_ ago."

Scarlett was already sitting at her and Snake Eyes' usual private corner table. When she saw Storm Shadow, she glared, scowling. "Snake…"

*Please.* Snake Eyes gave her a pained look. *I know you don't like him, but he _is _my friend, and I haven't seen him…well, without him trying to kill me…for a long time.*

"Have you completely forgotten about the fact that he _poisoned _you last month?"

Storm Shadow raised a hand. "To be fair, I knew he'd have the antidote on him, and he shot me, so we're more or less even there."

"Too bad it wasn't lower and more terminal. I should have stabbed you through the heart, not the shoulder."

"Sweet lady you've got, brother."

*She really is if you get to know her.*

"Shut up, Snake." Scarlett was still glowering at Storm Shadow. "Oh, if Hawk hadn't ordered me not to kill you…"

"Sweetheart, lucky shot to my shoulder notwithstanding, you wouldn't have a chance." Storm Shadow applied himself to his breakfast. "Oh, god…_real_ _food._ I think I'm in love."

"Call me sweetheart again and I will neuter you." Scarlett growled.

"Hint; don't make threats you can't carry through on."

"Oh, I'll carry through on it."

"You might try"

"Crossbow bolt _right_ to the…"

"You'd never hit me."

Snake Eyes sighed in resignation as his girlfriend snarled at his sword brother and his sword brother snarked back. He'd more or less expected this, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

In which Storm learns that wearing white to BeachHead's PT is NOT the wisest move, and Storm reflects on army Basic when you've already spent ten years training as a ninja.

* * *

Storm Shadow had experienced a great deal of pain in his life. This was pretty much expected for someone with a job description that involved knowing forty-eight separate ways to disarm a man pointing a gun at your face, fourteen more for a gun pointed at your temple from the side, twenty-two for a gun from behind, and several dozen different ways to disarm and kill a man with his own knife. He was quite familiar with the unique agony caused by various sorts of weapons.

Take knives. If the knife was sharp enough, sometimes you didn't even know when you'd gotten cut. Getting stabbed, however…you usually felt that _right_ away. Swords…well, those were pretty much like knives, except they usually left longer and deeper wounds. Out of the projectile weapons, Tommy would _much_ prefer to get hit with throwing spikes…so long as they weren't poisoned. Those just felt like a hard pinch; a _shuriken_ or knife, however…pretty much the same as getting stabbed.

Staffs and other blunt instruments were deep, bruising, aching pain. When it came to modern weapons, Tommy was pretty sure that he'd been shot at with just about every caliber of bullet made at some point or another. Including a grenade launcher. While bullets were faster than the more traditional, silent projectiles, they were also louder. Tommy could hear the soft metallic 'click' of a trigger being pulled before the bullet ever left the chamber of the firearm, and dodge accordingly. Still, he'd caught a few bullets over the years, and had the scars to prove it.

None of these, however, was as bad as the really sadistic methods of torture his uncles had called 'training'. This was why, when Tommy had joined the army, he'd been universally envied, applauded, and good-naturedly hated by the rest of the soldiers he'd gone through basic with. He'd breezed through basic training as if it was the easiest thing in the world, which for him, it _had_ been.

And then there'd been basic military hand-to-hand. Tommy grinned in memory. _That _had been interesting. There were probably still a few very traumatized ex-or-possibly-current hand to hand instructors at Fort Irwin. For some reason, the hand to hand instructors hadn't appreciated it when he'd corrected their stances. (Very helpfully, he thought, but some people were just _so_ ungrateful.)

He'd been dubbed 'fair game' by the instructors, who claimed they'd "Make an example out of the smartass little shit."

That had lasted approximately five minutes. Tommy had spent the rest of the day shrugging off the incredulous and admiring comments from his new fan club amongst his fellow recruits. The instructors, egos (and other body parts) bruised, had given up. The combination power sweep/joint lock followed by a chokehold he'd put Sergeant McKee down with seemed in particular to have made an impression. It might have also been the fact that Sergeants Marten, Shellar, and Kenzie were still groaning in the dust with matching men's size nine boot prints on various parts of their anatomy.

His explanation that he'd been training in martial arts since early childhood seemed to satisfy the questions, and wasn't a _complete_ lie. Once the hand-to-hand instructors figured out how to walk again, they'd given him full marks and a commendation for his hand to hand combat skills, and recommended him for Ranger training.

Rangers…

Apparently, the man who ran the Joe's PT, Sergeant Major Wayne Sneeden, code name BeachHead, was a damned _legend_ amongst all branches of the armed forces. Casually eavesdropping (and reading the Sergeant Major's file) had showed that pretty much anyone who'd ever had the ranger as their drill instructor regarded him as possibly the toughest, meanest drill instructor ever to set foot on an obstacle course. The mere mention of the man's name was enough to straighten spines and make even the bravest greenshirt look around nervously.

Tommy wasn't worried.

(And, incidentally, some of the G.I. Joe personnel files were absolutely _fascinating_ reads. The fact that, technically, he wasn't supposed to have access to those files didn't bother Tommy any. He didn't see it as being nosy; he saw it as being well informed.)

He woke in his new private room at six sharp, reflecting that it was a sad situation when an army-issue cot was more comfortable than some of the places you'd slept. He also made a mental note to get himself a better mattress. He'd slept in trees, under brush, in tiny, in barely-enough-room-to-curl-up-in caves halfway up cliffs, and could probably nap on concrete during a rainstorm if he was tired enough. Still, there wasn't any point being uncomfortable if you didn't have to be.

He yawned, rolled to his feet, stretched his shoulders until the joints popped, and started digging through his things. Snake Eyes had hinted that Tommy probably shouldn't wear anything that he valued to PT. Dressed in one of his older _gi_ uniforms, Tommy trotted out to the PT field in a rather good mood.

There were a few people already gathered, and the Sergeant Major was eying them…in particular, the bearded navy sailor called 'Shipwreck'…as if daring them to try anything stupid. Tommy slipped up behind Scarlett. He wasn't making any special effort to be silent, but then he _was_ a ninja; his normal walk was quieter than most people's sneaking. Snake Eyes, alerted by the slight change in air pressure caused by a human-sized object moving the air behind him, turned and nodded.

Scarlett turned, looking curious. "Who…_CHRIST!" _She jumped. "_Jesus…_Don't sneak up behind me like that!" She scowled. "I'm just barely used to _Snake _doing that, and he's not going to _stab me._"

Storm frowned. "I'd like to point out that in recent days, _I'm _the only one who's gotten stabbed…and wasn't that by _you?_" He rolled his healing shoulder. "I was only trying to talk, and what did I get? A knife through my shoulder and massive blood loss." He grinned, which made her blink. "Actually, that was a pretty nice one…at least when you stab someone, you know what you're aiming for, and you hit it. I appreciate that. I _hate_ incompetence." He grimaced. "Nothing irritates me more than hearing those crime reports where someone stabs a person _eight times _and still doesn't finish the job. You should only have to do it _once."_

Scarlett blinked. "Did you just complement me for almost killing you?"

"It's rare for someone to be able to stab me, expecting it or not. And it was a good strike." Tommy shrugged. "Without that medic, I'd have been dead. I respect competence."

"You just _complemented _me for _almost killing you?"_

Snake Eyes was smiling with something like pride. *Shana is very, very good. And, by the way, did you want that knife you left in my arm six months back, or can I keep it? It's got _great_ balance…I've been using it.*

Tommy perked up. "You've got my Shotomura fighting knife yet? I thought that ended up at the bottom of the Amazon. That was custom made…I was _mad_ when I lost it. Yes, I want it back."

Snake Eyes tilted his head. *I could claim it as reparation for all the stitches I had to get, you know.*

Tommy snorted. "I had three of your bullets pulled out of my leg after that incident. At least my cuts on you were _clean…_stitch and done. One of those bullets nicked my femur. They were picking bone chips and metal out of me for an hour. If anyone gets reparations, _I_ do."

The other Joes, alerted to their new teammate's presence by the conversation, eyed Tommy suspiciously and edged a bit further away. This didn't bother Storm; he was used to being viewed with suspicion and even fear by his teammates. In Cobra, the vipers had been outright terrified of him, Destro had been cautiously condescending, the Baroness had just been a bossy bitch, Bludd had been alternately derogatory and (after a little incident involving Tommy's foot and Bludd's ribs) downright leery. The Commander, of course, had just been an abrasive, demanding prick, and the twins…well, Tommy had more than once had to consciously keep himself from ripping out their larynxes just so they'd _stop finishing each other's sentences whenever they talked._

No one had been friendly, or even more than 'civil enough to keep the ninja from shoving my head through the wall'. Guarded caution was so familiar to Tommy that he barely noticed it.

Snake Eyes looked him over. *White?*

"All my uniforms are white."

Snake Eyes shook with silent laughter. *Not for long...I'd see the quartermasters about something else for PT if I was you.*

And then BeachHead yelled at them to "FORM UP!"

Tommy had been yelled at pretty often over the years. It had been the Commander's main method of communication. But the burly Ranger running PT was achieving some really impressive decibel levels; Tommy almost cringed as the shout met his remarkably sensitive eardrums. He jumped automatically into ranks with the rest, the Joes to either side of him looking just slightly uneasy.

BeachHead stalked along the line until he was right in Tommy's face. Tommy, who'd been through this sort of thing before, didn't blink as the ranger scowled at him.

"An' here we've got the turncoat." Beach growled. "Boy, Hawk might be willing to give you a chance, but I ain't forgot what you've done to me and my team. I fully intend to make you suffer for every cut you've put on me and every man I've had to write home for after you finished with them."

"Fair enough." Tommy said calmly.

BeachHead blinked, and then the scowl was back. "Down! I want two hundred pushups, and I want them _yesterday._ An' don't you _dare_ try and do 'em on your palms…I'd better see you up on your knuckles for every damned one, pouge."

Tommy dropped obediently. He ended up having to do four hundred pushups all together, counting warm-ups. The last fifty were with BeachHead resting one foot and at _least_ seventy or eighty pounds of his weight on his back. Tommy swore that every time he successfully completed a rep, Beach leaned just a _little _harder on the foot between his shoulders.

At four hundred, BeachHead leaned the rest of his two-hundred something pounds on the ninja, flattening him into the grass apparently purely for his own amusement. The ranger stepped back, gruffly ordered everyone to flip over, and they started on crunches.

When it came time to run, Tommy was run twice as far as the rest of the team; since this brought the total up to six miles, he still wasn't particularly bothered. BeachHead watched, and it seemed to irritate him that even he couldn't find any reason to fault the ninja's form; Tommy was an experienced runner, and he knew to pick up and move without being told.

He'd learned that the hard way. The Hard Master wouldn't tell you that you weren't going fast enough…he'd catch you. Staff first. Tommy still had not-so-fond memories of the resulting bruises. The Soft Master would just outrun you, and then proceed to poke fun at you for being outrun by a "fat old man."

Tommy was becoming fairly sure that not performing to this particular drill sergeant's standards would earn the more physical sort of injury.

The obstacle course proved to be just as easy as Tommy had suspected. Sure, by regular military standards it was fairly torturous, and Tommy, watching the other groups run it, was rather looking forwards to a bracing bit of wake-you-up cardio…but it was still a military obstacle course.

Snake Eyes breezed over the course with ease; Storm nodded to himself. He'd expected no less from his sword brother. BeachHead, who'd found something about most of the Joe's runs to critique, just nodded to the mute ninja and grunted. "Not bad."

Storm Shadow was sent through the course alone, and last. BeachHead fixed that irritable glare on him and the scowl under the balaclava deepened. "I dunno what kind of 'training' they have at Cobra, but it ain't this. Move your ass!"

It took Storm Shadow approximately eighteen seconds to realize exactly what Snake Eyes had meant about his white clothes. At eighteen seconds into the course, he was dodging and weaving his way through a gauntlet of sniper fire; he didn't get hit, but in between the resulting grass stains (though the drop/lean back/slide under four paintball rounds then bounce up and cartwheel between six more seemed to impress a few of the watching Joes) and the mud pit under the wire crawl, his uniform wasn't white any longer by the time he cleared the course.

The cold, muddy water in the tunnel crawl wasn't particularly fun either. When Tommy crossed the finish line, he was dripping and wondering exactly how much bleach it would take to salvage his clothes. BeachHead was still scowling, which Tommy was becoming fairly certain was more or less the Sergeant Major's favorite expression.

"Not bad." BeachHead said grudgingly. "Quick little sonovabitch, ain't ya? Do it again. _Move._"

Tommy ended up running the course three more times, apparently purely because BeachHead was taking a great deal of pleasure in watching him get muddy, sweaty, and covered in grass clipping from the recently mown course. The sight of their Sergeant Major yelling at their ex-enemy seemed to be a fairly popular spectacle; Tommy distinctly heard quiet wagers being placed on whether or not he'd be able to walk after Beach finished with him.

Anyone who'd bet against him lost. After his fourth run of the course, BeachHead just examined him, still scowling. "Well, you don't whine, and you're in shape. That's somethin'. Still don't trust ya, spook, and I'm still gonna run you hard."

"Fair enough, Sergeant Major."

BeachHead grunted. "Dismissed. All of ya."

As he was heading back towards the Pit, Tommy's sharp ears still heard the Sergeant Major's quiet mutter. "Damned turncoat…_Trust him, _Hawk says…"

Snake Eyes fell into step to Tommy's left. His sword brother was grinning. *See what I mean?*

"I think I do." Tommy examined his filthy _gi_ top and brushed some grass off of one shoulder.

*How is it that your hair isn't muddy?*

Tommy grinned. "What? My uncles never revealed the secrets of hair maintenance to you?"

Snake Eyes snorted, his shoulders shaking. *I must have missed that day.*


	4. Chapter 4

In which BeachHead learns that attempting to punch ninja is a Bad Idea, no matter how many scars they've given you, how many times you've tried to shoot them, and how badly you think they deserve it. Just don't do it, people. In the immortal words of Sho Kosugi (in pretty much every movie he ever made, most of which I own, because I am a geek), "Only a ninja can kill a ninja."

Well, or a nuke. A nuclear bomb might do it too, to be fair. Kinda impractical, though. So just stick to leaving ninja alone, okay? Good.

Sorry, Beach. I'm a fan, really. But you're a stubborn man and don't have a problem telling people when you don't like them, and, well, if you swing on a ninja you're going to get your ass kicked. I'll make it up to you later, okay? Please don't make me do pushups.

* * *

There were a few things that Sergeant Major Wayne Sneeden hated beyond anything else in the world. One was losing men under his command. Another was traitors, particularly traitors who had once been in the United States military. As far as he was concerned, turning your back on your country and your team was about as low as you could possibly get.

When faced with someone who had served in the military and yet had taken up with an international terrorist organization and proceeded to kill American soldiers that had served under and alongside Beach, the ranger's first instinct was to see how well a ninja could dodge a firing squad. Actually, that was his second and third instinct, too. His fourth was to get both of his hands around the neck of the little bastard and squeeze until something broke.

Needless to say, he wasn't particularly pleased with the new addition to the Joe team. As far as he was concerned, the best thing to do with Storm Shadow would have involved several hundred M16 rounds and possibly some explosives afterwards, just to be sure. But his CO had ordered him _not_ to kill the bastard, because now he was a _teammate._

A _teammate. _After years of considering the man probably one of the most dangerous enemy operatives in the world, with standing orders to shoot the ninja on sight…not that gunfire aimed his way usually fazed Storm Shadow too much.

Hawk was entirely too trusting for his own good. BeachHead had voiced this opinion. He'd been ignored completely.

To be fair, the prospect of getting his hands on the infamous Cobra agent for PT had been an attractive one. His initial glee, however, had been tempered somewhat by the fact that Storm hadn't batted an eye that morning.

He should have expected that, really. He'd more or less given up on pushing Snake Eyes to his limits, after all, and Storm Shadow had gone through the same (actually, according to Snake, more) training. BeachHead had tangled with the ninja before. He had scars from the encounter, and as far as he could tell he hadn't so much as put a scratch on Storm Shadow, despite unloading a full clip from his .45 at the ninja.

Damned man was quick, he'd give him that.

Due mostly to the ninja (how Hawk could _not _see that, in all likelihood, the man was simply undercover and working as a double agent, Beach didn't understand) BeachHead was already in a bad mood. When he stopped by the laundry room to drop off some of his things, the sight of a white-clad figure just leaving didn't help.

Scowling, he elbowed his way past the ninja. Or tried to; Storm, not even looking, automatically deflected the incoming elbow to one side, which made BeachHead scowl even more. The ninja glanced sideways and raised an eyebrow in an expression that made BeachHead's blood pressure climb another few notches.

"You really have a winning personality, don't you?" The ninja said dryly. "Did your mother never teach you to say 'excuse me?'"

His vision went red. "Hawk mighta ordered me to put up with ya, but I ain't gotta be polite. Ah don't intend to play kissyface with a damned little two faced backstabbing traitor, anyways." His fingers curled; slamming a fist into that smirking face was something he'd wanted to do for a _long_ time. "If I had mah way, you'd be lookin' at me from the other side of mah .45." He scowled. "Damned turncoat…how much are you gettin' paid by the Commander to play this little game, an' how long before we wake up with knives in our backs?"

Storm narrowed his eyes. BeachHead saw the ninja shift his weight to the balls of his feet, but the ninja didn't make a move. "I swore service to Hawk. I've put your men in the ground before. I know that, and I regret it. But one thing I am _not_ is a traitor. Everything I've done, I've done for my clan and to avenge the murder of my uncle. I am _not_ working for the Commander. My oath to Hawk is _not_ fake; I wouldn't have sworn on my honor and the mark of my clan if I intended to go back on my word. If Hawk ordered it, I'd even take a bullet for _you._"

"Your _word._" Beach snorted. "Lotta good that is."

"Don't worry." Storm turned to stalk away. "You won't wake up with a knife in your back. And whether or not you believe it, I've never broken an oath like the one I swore to your CO. Thick as your skull is, I expect it'll take you awhile to figure that out, so I won't take offense."

The sight of the ninja who'd spent the last several years sending his men to the hospital and the undertaker within arm's reach, back turned, was just too much. BeachHead growled and swung, a really beautiful straight punch that probably would have concussed the man had he connected. And considering the fact that BeachHead was a _hell_ of a lot faster than you'd expect from a man his size and an experienced and deadly fighter to boot, it logically _should_ have connected.

He didn't even come close. Storm Shadow leaned, ducked, and was quite simply _gone, _just like that. BeachHead started to pivot, dropping into a fighting crouch and trying to locate the ninja again.

Something slammed into his side. _Hard._ He staggered sideways, and before he could regain his balance a foot neatly swept his legs out from underneath him, and an elbow slammed down between his shoulders, driving him face-first into the floor. He growled and went to surge back to his feet, only to have a knee plant itself on the back of his neck and his arms jerked back at a _really_ uncomfortable angle. He growled and tried to get his feet under him. This just earned him a sharp heel to the pressure point at his coccyx, effectively shutting down all function below his hips. His legs went pins-and-needles for a second, and then just numb.

Crap.

"That was a _bad_ idea." Storm sounded _way_ too calm. "I might have promised not to start anything, but I will sure as _hell_ finish anything that you want to initiate. I don't care if you hate me, but swing on me and I will _stop_ being nice for about thirty seconds. And I don't care that you outrank me. I serve _Hawk, _not you."

BeachHead felt something cinch tightly around his wrists. It was metallic, and felt like braided wire. His hands secured, the ninja let go of him; Beach promptly tried to stand. His feet, however, were still uncooperative, and he just managed to roll over.

"You _little sonovabitch..._I am gonna _murder you…_lemme up, goddamnit…"

This didn't do him much good, because three seconds later Storm was zip-tying his ankles together with one of the plastic strips used by the laundry crew to secure bags. The ninja deftly secured a second strip around the ranger's wrists and removed his garrote, tucking it back into a sleeve.

"God. Fuckin'. _Dammit_!" BeachHead snarled. "I will have you _court marshaled _for _assaulting a superior…"_

"Mm." Storm grabbed him by the back of the shirt, casually avoiding the attempted headbutt, and dragged him over to one of the dryers. "You do that. I told you; I don't care about rank. I'm a _ninja,_ not a soldier. Besides, Hawk said I could deal out what I felt to be suitable humiliation to anyone who decided to swing on me, so long as I didn't cause permanent damage. You swung first, so I'm justified." A wicked grin.

The ninja shoved the Sergeant Major behind the dryer, planted a foot on his chest, and leaned forwards. "The laundry crew should be back in an hour or two; they just went to lunch. Or you could yell and hope someone hears you. Have fun."

"You are fuckin'_ dead_ tomorrow, you _little shitfaced prick."_

"Looking forward to it." Storm was still grinning. "Let's hope we've learned our lesson about assaulting ninja, hmm?"

The smaller man spun and vanished out of his field of view, which at the moment was admittedly somewhat limited by the fact that BeachHead was behind a large industrial dryer. He heard the door click shut.

Fuck. _Fuck._

Well, that had _not_ gone well. BeachHead cursed under his breath, wriggled in an attempt to dislodge himself, and cursed more loudly. Little. Son. Of. A. _Bitch. _A man thirty pounds lighter and four inches shorter than him should _not_ be able to throw him around this easily.

He was going to give Hawk an earful about the ninja when he got out of this, that was for damned sure. He wriggled again, managing to inch himself slightly towards freedom.

God. Fucking. Dammit.

"SOMEONE GET THEIR WORTHLESS ASS IN HERE AND GET ME OUT!"

He was _never_ going to live this down. BeachHead alternated squirming and yelling with planning _exactly _what he'd do to Storm Shadow tomorrow morning.

It was going to be _epic._ Cringe inducing. The stuff barracks legends were made of. See if the fucker could smirk when he couldn't goddamn well _stand._

"GODDAMNIT! SOMEONE GET IN HERE!"

Fucking. Hell.

Fucking. Goddamn. _Hell. _

Goddamn _ninja._


	5. Chapter 5

The position of Top Sergeant in any military base was an interesting one. The job description of 'soldier' was pretty well summed up by 'long periods of extreme boredom punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror'.

The G.I. Joe team was the best on the planet at dealing with the 'brief moments of sheer terror'. Quite frankly more than a few of the Joes, who were as crazed a bunch of adrenaline junkies as had ever lived, very much enjoyed the opportunity to kick a few well armed assholes who hated baseball, Mom, and apple pie squarely in the teeth a few dozen times or until said terrorists stopped breathing. Whichever came first; they weren't particularly picky.

The periods of extreme boredom, on the other hand, often _weren't _so boring to the people who had to deal with a bunch men and women who were bored, inventive, sometimes not exactly gifted with an abundance of common sense, and whom considered extra C4 a 'really fun toy.' The ability of bored soldiers to get into extremely interesting trouble was a worldwide phenomenon, spanning diverse cultures and thousands of years of history. The soldiers of G.I. Joe were no exception, and they had more expensive toys to break than most.

This had given Conrad Hauser, more commonly known as Duke, enough migraines over his years as the First Shirt of the loony bin called 'the Pit' that he rather thought he should own stock in Tylenol.

There was a fresh bottle sitting in his desk drawer right now; he'd stocked up as soon as the newest transfer to the team had become official. So far, however, things had been pretty quiet…well, as quiet as the Pit ever was.

This wasn't fooling Duke. It was, in fact, rather worse waiting for the crazy shit to start going down (and it _would; _he'd had this job long enough to know that it was an inevitability) than actually dealing with the resulting explanation, mediation of the dispute, and subsequent assignment of punishment detail to the guilty party. (He could hear it now. "Well, and then I thought, y'know, if you just swiped one of Doc's syringes and got some of the paintball guns Beach uses for sniper gauntlets, you could suck out the paint, and then fill 'em back up with some of the dirty motor oil from the humvees…cigarette lighter will melt the hole back over… it isn't like we tried to shoot him with _real _guns, sir…")

Thus, when a frantic-looking greenshirt burst through his office door while he was neck deep in security reports and requisition forms, it was almost a relief. _Almost_ being the operative word.

"Sir! SIR!"

Duke glanced at the clock; his shift was up in twenty minutes, and then Flint was on as the officer on duty for the night. He'd bet his salary for the next year that this was going to take more than twenty minutes to settle.

"Who is it, what did they do to BeachHead, and where are they?" The greenies both feared and worshipped the Sergeant Major, and would always go to him first if he wasn't indisposed. And usually even if he _was, _which had resulted in some rather entertaining punishment details over the years_._

Duke still wasn't sure where BeachHead had gotten a bulk box of toy Barbie hairbrushes. Pink ones. With _glitter. _He would have _sworn_, until that day, that you couldn't dig a foxhole with a doll brush, but by God, the poor greenie had done it. Educational, that was what being a soldier was.

Anyway, if they were coming to him, and BeachHead was both on base and on duty, then _something_ bad was going down.

"Sir, someone tied Sergent Major up in the laundry room and..."

"Back up and slow down." Duke shoved the forms he was signing off on aside. "Someone tied BeachHead up in the _laundry room?"_ Dammit, he hoped that the poor kid hadn't stumbled across some kinky ranger-on-model frat reg violation during the act, because otherwise he was in for a _really _awkward conversation with their Sergeant Major and best Wolverine driver over what, exactly, constituted 'discreet'.

"I heard yelling, and found Sergeant Major tied up and shoved behind a dryer, and he said Storm Shadow did it, and I turned him loose and Sergeant Major said he was going to "make himself a new pair of ninja-hide boots" and he stomped off and then something happened in the motor pool and now Sergeant Major is tied to a tank…"

Something between his eyes twinged. Duke sighed, pulled his desk drawer open, cracked his fresh bottle of painkillers open, and downed two with the dregs of his coffee. "Tied as in present tense?"

"When I last saw him five minutes ago."

"Why didn't you _untie_ him?"

The young man shifted uneasily. "He…seemed pretty mad, sir. I've got a girlfriend, and I'd like to make it to the wedding with all of my limbs intact. I don't think I would have managed that if I had gotten within Sergeant Major's reach."

That…was actually probably a valid point. Duke sighed, stood and headed for the door.

The sounds of commotion coming from the motor pool were loud enough to be heard from a considerable distance. When Duke poked his head through the motor pool door, the spectacle that met his eyes made him blink a few times.

BeachHead was, in fact, tied to a tank. To the fifty cal installment on the tank, to be exact, and not so much 'tied' as 'secured with what looked like an entire roll of duct tape'. The Sergeant Major was swearing at the top of his lungs at a small but appreciative crowd consisting of Clutch, Grunt, and four of the grease monkeys. All six were showing no signs of aiding the incapacitated ranger; Clutch, actually, had a camera, and two of the grease monkeys were snickering over the 'new heavy gun ammunition'.

Duke was pretty sure that once he got Beach down all six men would vanish and never be heard from again, though some unexplained grease stains _might _be found on the PT course the next day. All the same, he might have to confiscate that camera…the contents of that film roll would be _priceless._

"DUKE! GET ME THE HELL OFFA HERE SO I CAN KILL ME SOME MOTHERFUCKIN' MECHANICS AND NINJA! CLUTCH, YOUR _MOMMA_ IS GONNA BE HURTIN' AFTER I FINISH WITH YOUR SORRY ASS…"

The grease monkeys and infantry soldiers started, looked guiltily at Duke, and were plainly considering flight.

"Don't even think about it. My office, all of you. Clutch, stay…BeachHead, what the _hell…_"

It was about then that a blur with very sharp elbows flew past his position in the doorway. Covergirl, scowling, scrambled up the side of her Wolverine and started cutting duct tape away with her combat knife, while glaring at everyone else.

"You." She pointed at Clutch, who looked rather nervous, since she was pointing with a very sharp knife. "I am going to tie _you_ to the treads of my Wolverine and see how _you damn well like it…_and the rest of you? I am going to kick you in the balls _so_ hard that a thousand years from now, your grandchildren's grandchildren will _still_ walk funny. Am I _perfectly fucking clear on this?" _She turned back to Beach. "Are you okay?"

"You're not doing _anything _to them." Duke said firmly. "BeachHead, what the _hell_ is going on?"

"Bloodyfuckin' damn _ninja. _I am gonna murder him _so hard…_"

"Storm Shadow?" Duke sighed. "Who swung first?"

"It wasn't Storm Shadow, sir." Clutch tentatively spoke up. "At least…not _this._ I'm pretty sure whatever went down in the laundry room was, but not this one."

Duke's eyebrows headed for his hairline. "_Snake Eyes _did this?"

"Well, BeachHead tried to punch him, sir…he was yelling at him about Storm Shadow, and I don't think Snake was being very sympathetic. Then BeachHead said something about 'shoulda killed the little sonovabitch, an' if we wake up dead it's _your_ fault foraiding a known terrorist.""

Clutch, actually, did a scarily accurate imitation of BeachHead's Alabama drawl, Duke noted.

The mauler driver continued. "That kinda seemed to upset Snake, and I don't know what he signed because his back was to me but Beach went _purple, _and took a swing at him." A moment's pause. "It was actually kinda cool to watch...I sort of want to learn that throw now. Maybe I'll talk to Snake next time I have hand-to-hand."

Duke was very, very glad he had taken the painkillers when he did; they were just starting to kick in now, dulling what would otherwise have been a really spectacular tension migraine. He sighed heavily. "Right. Everyone to my office…I'll straighten it all out there."

An hour later, when he'd _planned_ to be taking a very hot shower and turning in early, he was instead staring across his desk at a very unrepentant looking pair of ninja. The grease monkeys, Clutch, and Grunt had all been assigned KP. BeachHead had been dismissed, still fuming; Duke would have to talk to Hawk about exactly what punishment would be forthcoming for the ranger, though he personally rather felt that the humiliation factor was probably punishment enough for the sin of starting the fights.

Though, from what he'd gathered, 'fight' wasn't so much the operative term as 'being used as a human crash test dummy'. Fortunately, BeachHead was a tough guy…he had a few bruises, but nothing serious, which didn't surprise Duke. He knew that Snake Eyes had an uncanny ability to know exactly how hard he could go without hurting his teammates in hand-to-hand; he assumed that Storm Shadow had the same kind of control.

"You don't want to pursue charges of assault, do you?" Duke prayed that the answer was no. "Beach admitted that he was the aggressor…much as I may not personally be a fan, you _are_ one of the men under my command, and you'd be within your rights."

A snort. "That? Assault? That was just _entertaining._ No harm done, except maybe to my shoes when I spend most of tomorrow on the track, like I'm sure I'll end up doing. I understand why he doesn't trust me, and why he would want some revenge. He's a good leader, from what I've heard, and I've killed men under his command. He's worried about his men, his CO, and his teammates, and he's not about to forgive me for what I've done to him and his just because Hawk told everyone to play nice. He'll yell, and probably pound me through the ground at PT, and insult me, and probably won't come around until I've dragged his backside out of trouble a time or three. None of this bothers me."

Duke let out a sigh of relief. "Thank _God._ Snake Eyes, did you really have to tape him to the gun installment? You could have just, I don't know, vanished or something. Come to think of it, couldn't you _both_ have done that?"

Storm Shadow blinked. Snake Eyes tilted his head. Both of them managed to convey such utter looks of 'huh?' that Duke sighed.

"He swung at me." Storm Shadow said simply. "I don't appreciate it when people try and hit me. I gave him an example of why it is a very bad idea. Now he probably won't try something quite so stupid ever again…I don't see the issue."

*We didn't hurt him.* Snake Eyes pointed out, as if this should be enough…and to be fair, most people who took a shot at a ninja probably ended up with worse than a few bruises and a damaged ego. *He'll hurt us _far_ worse when we turn up for PT tomorrow.*

Duke sighed again. Lifeline, when he had first transferred to the team, had caused more than a little stir because of his firm pacifistic stance. There had been a few incidents. Duke had turned to the Tylenol bottle more than once. Now he suddenly realized that he was dealing with the far polar opposite end of the spectrum; just as a pacifist couldn't even fathom voluntarily causing harm to another human, the two men in front of him probably didn't even consider nonviolence as an option when faced with an opponent actively trying to cause some blunt force trauma with his fists. Actually, they probably considered the fact that they hadn't actually broken anything or even left serious bruises to _be _handling a situation in a nonviolent manner.

"Right." He rubbed at his temple. "Still…fighting isn't going to be tolerated. One day of KP for both of you. I won't give you to Beach, because that would just be sadistic on my part. I'm sure the kitchen staff will enjoy having a pair of ninja to shove into and under things."

Both men grimaced. Duke personally sympathized; he'd rather crawl through swamp mud in hostile territory while nursing multiple gunshot wounds and hiding from heavily armed militant insurgents than clean out a grease trap. Still, it was a fairly lenient sentence, and they both knew it.

"Sir." Storm Shadow still looked distinctly unhappy at the prospect.

Snake Eyes just saluted.

"Dismissed." Duke watched them leave, waited a few minutes, and then stood and walked the ten yards down the hallway to Hawk's office and poked his head in.

Hawk was just finishing up some of his own paperwork. He glanced up at Duke, then at the clock, then back at Duke.

He sighed. "Less than a day…what happened, exactly?"

"BeachHead. Decided to take a revenge shot; Storm apparently hogtied him and left him behind one of the dryers."

"I heard something about a tank."

"That would be because our good Sergeant Major, while looking for someone to kill, ran into Snake Eyes, started yelling, and insinuated that Snake should have just killed Storm in cold blood when he had the chance. Snake Eyes, obviously, didn't take this so well, and decided to duct tape Beach to one of the Wolverines when Beach took a swing at him."

"Of course." Hawk kept a straight face, which as far as Duke was concerned should have won his CO some sort of trophy. "What _else _would you do to two hundred and fifteen pounds of spitting mad ranger? What did I tell you?"

"That it would be less than a day, sir." Duke sighed. "I owe you what, twenty-five?"

"Sounds about right." Hawk yawned. "I should turn in…I've got a few reports to finish, though. I told you thirty hours was assuming _way _too much time for as unhinged a bunch of lunatics as we've got stationed here."

"Sorry for doubting you, sir."


	6. Chapter 6

I have absolutely no idea what Snake Eyes' blood type actually is, because it never says anywhere in the comics. So I completely pulled that one out of my ass. Sue me.

* * *

Shana O'Hara, called "Scarlett" by pretty much everyone but Snake Eyes, was rather uneasy about the new addition to the team. She had spent years watching the man she loved limp back to base after tangling with Storm Shadow…and that was a best-case scenario. More than once, Snake Eyes hadn't even been able to _limp._ Doc and Lifeline had once tried to calculate exactly how many gallons of type A positive they'd gone through due to Storm Shadow's habit of going for vital targets. They'd gone through Snake Eyes' file and the consensus was somewhere around ten or eleven, which had made Scarlett shudder.

Snake Eyes had shrugged this off, pointing out that the Cobra medics probably had similar statistics on Storm Shadow. Scarlett considered this incontrovertible evidence that her lover was, in fact, crazy.

But…well…She sighed. The last few days, Snake had been in a better mood than she'd seen in a _long_ time. The two ninja had, apparently, resumed their interrupted friendship without blinking an eye over the years of bloodshed and hatred. Snake Eyes was not exactly the most social man, and Shana had a hard time begrudging him a friendship that so obviously valued.

She wasn't entirely sure, however, how much of the Pit would survive. One ninja perpetrated enough weirdness, and however much she loved him Scarlett would be the first to admit that training techniques and habits that Snake Eyes considered 'normal' had probably sent more Joes to Psyche Out than anything the team saw on the front lines of battle.

There was the BeachHead incident...which was rapidly becoming Pit legend; Duke had threatened to release the pictures saved from Clutch's camera if Beach saw fit to initiate fights with either man again. And the resulting combination of two ninja, kitchen implements, and KP...the kitchen staff had _begged _Duke never to inflict such torture on them again. The poor cooks had been rather vocal about the risks inherent in having two ninja hanging around, telling anyone who cared to ask about the whole ordeal in exhaustive detail.

Apparently, asking a ninja to pass you a paring knife involved a certain amount of risk to life and limb. "Pass me the knife" apparently meant "throw it over here so it sticks in the counter a half inch from my hand" to a ninja. Shoving a ninja under a counter after a lost fork apparently involved a high possibility of losing track of said ninja completely. Until you weren't expecting it, and then they'd be _right behind you, _innocently informing you that while they were under there they fixed the loose plug on the freezer_._

Storm Shadow also apparently took _way _too much pleasure in peeling potatoes for any sane person, and had criticized the degree of care lavished on the kitchen cutlery, even recommending a particular brand of whetstone to maintain a better edge. This had, from what Scarlett had heard, deeply unsettled the kitchen staff. She'd been slightly irritated at Snake for his part in teasing the poor cooks so relentlessly, until she realized that he hadn't _tried_ to scare them. He'd just been...well, Snake Eyes.

The two really acted like...well, like a pair of brothers. Scarlett had brothers, and so the behavior was familiar to her.

She still didn't trust Storm Shadow. Thus, a few days after the BeachHead incident, when Scarlett and Jaye were hunched over an intel brief in the control room, Scarlett's heart almost stopped when Tunnel Rat burst suddenly into the room. Both intel agents and Breaker looked around curiously.

"Snake and Storm are going at it!" The short man did an about face and tore out of the room at top speed.

Ice closed around Scarlett's heart. She lunged after 'Rat, intel brief forgotten.

She caught him before he'd gone ten steps, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed him back against the wall. "_Where?"_

Tunnel Rat blinked. "Ouch. Leggo, huh?"

"I do _not have time for this."_ Scarlett snarled. "Where is he, and why aren't you helping Snake?"

Tunnel Rat grinned suddenly. "Oh…they ain't really fighting. Sorry. They're in the _dojo_ with those wooden sword things…what d'ya call em? It's freakin' cool. Thought you'd want to watch. You do that martial arts thing too and all."

Scarlett's heart started beating again. She let out a slow breath. _Thank god._ "'Rat, I ought to hurt you for that."

"Sorry, Scarlett." The little man did look slightly guilty. "Didn't really think about how it would sound. Please let me go? Dusty said he'd save a place for me, but I don't wanna miss too much."

Scarlett let go of Tunnel Rat's shirt. The little man brushed himself off and trotted off down the hall, muttering something about crazy redheads.

Jaye and Breaker caught up with her just then. Both eyed her.

"They're just sparring, apparently." Scarlett sighed.

"I figured, if you weren't already trying to shoot Storm." Jaye slid her sidearm away.

Breaker did the same, and then took off down the hall. He paused after a few steps and looked back. "Aren't you two coming?"

Jaye raised an eyebrow.

"C'mon." Breaker looked unexpectedly eager. "There's a ninja battle going on and we're missing it…not often I get to watch one without having to dive for cover and shoot at one of them."

"He's got a point." Jaye sounded thoughtful.

Ten minutes later, Scarlett was elbowing her way through an unexpectedly large crowd packing themselves around the _dojo_ doors, vying for a good view. She cracked the door open and edged inside, apparently signaling to several of the other Joes that actually going inside was okay.

The first thing she saw was Storm landing in a shoulder roll after, apparently, getting tossed halfway across the room by Snake. The white-clad ninja bounced back to his feet and launched himself back at Snake Eyes, apparently in an effort to get back to his second _bokken_, which was lying just behind the visored commando.

He didn't quite make it; in fact, Snake snatched the fallen weapon up and met Storm sword points first. Tommy spun aside, avoiding the double strike, dropping to one knee, and slicing _up_ at the back of Snake's knees. Snake twisted and parried, and then Tommy was dancing back again as Snake unloaded a series of attacks that were almost too fast to see.

The two of them seemed to be having a _great_ time. Storm was grinning, and Snake Eyes' body language was almost _playful._

Actually…it _did _look pretty fun. Scarlett was, after all, a martial artist, and she knew very well that there absolutely weren't very many things in life better than a really good sparring session.

She raised her eyebrows slightly as Storm closed with a complicated feint/jab, managed to wrap up Snake's left blade, and promptly buried a side kick into her lover's ribs, sending him flying. The sword stayed with Storm, and he deftly flipped it into his empty hand. Snake Eyes was back on his feet already, of course, but that had been a pretty cool disarming move...one that she might have to have Snake teach her later.

There were at least ten Joes watching raptly now, which neither ninja seemed to have noticed.

The sparring battle went on for another fifteen minutes, and was finally ended with Snake Eyes' _bokken _to Storm Shadow's temple. The two ninja bowed formally to each other, and then Storm turned to the watching Joes and bowed again, this time with a wide enough smirk that no one would ever have thought he'd just _lost._

Looking that smug while dripping sweat and just after getting cracked upside the head with a _bokken_ was something that Scarlett would have sworn that no one could successfully pull off. There was a smattering of applause, and the Joes began drifting off, probably…she glanced at the clock. Probably to dinner.

She waited while the ninja returned the training swords to the tiny closet where the dummy knives and guns were also kept.

"If you're done." She said calmly once Snake turned around. "It's almost five thirty. Roadblock is cooking tonight…you coming, or do you just want me to save you some?"

Snake Eyes perked up. *That's right…I'm coming.*

Storm Shadow tilted his head. "Roadblock? The heavy machine gunner?"

Snake nodded.

"The one with a degree in gourmet cooking?"

Scarlett raised an eyebrow.

"I've seen his file." Storm said absently. He was already halfway out the door.

He vanished around the corner at speed, leaving her to consider the implications of the ninja apparently managing to gain access to the highly-classified Joe personnel files. Scarlett fell in alongside Snake Eyes, who headed for the mess hall at a far more sedate pace than his sword brother.

"You scared me." She murmured.

He looked sideways at her. *How?*

"Tunnel Rat came running by and just said you and Storm were fighting. I thought he meant _fighting _fighting…I had visions of you in the ER flashing before my eyes."

He paused, turned to face her, and very gently smoothed a stray bit of hair back over her ear. *He's not going to hurt me, Shana. I know him…he's not working against us any longer.*

"You keep saying that." She sighed.

*It's true.* He paused. *Do you honestly think that if I had the slightest bit of doubt about his intentions I'd risk letting him anywhere _close _to you?*

She smiled. "I'm just a little bitter about the whole 'getting kidnapped' thing yet. That and how often he's put you in the hospital." She grimaced. "And…well…you're just enjoying having your friend back, and I'm afraid he could be lying and you just wouldn't _want _to believe it."

*However much I've missed my brother, and however much I've wanted him to leave Cobra and regain his honor, I wouldn't risk you just because I wanted it to be true.* Snake pulled her close. *I know him. I know when he's lying. He's not.*

"I still don't trust him."

*Give him a chance. He's a good man, for all he's done bad things.*

Scarlett sighed. "Well, he's had about two dozen chances to kill just about all of us by now, and he hasn't. That's something."

Snake smiled. *Thank you.*

She sighed again. "Let's go eat."

The mess hall, per usual when Roadblock took over food production, was packed. Tonight it was grilled lamb, herbed rice, a vegetable dish that Scarlett took one experimental taste of and promptly considered stealing the whole damn tray, and…._oh, god…_German chocolate cake.

At their corner table, Storm Shadow was already halfway through his food, and looked rather as if he'd just seen the face of God.

"No talking, please." Storm Shadow eyed her plate as they sat down, looking distinctly as if he was considering stealing it. "I'm having a religious moment here."

Scarlett scowled and raised her fork threateningly. "Touch my cake and you die."

"Keep the cake. Just give me that rice. I'm going to find Roadblock and propose."

Snake Eyes started laughing, his shoulders shaking. *You wouldn't even be the first of the team to do it.*

"Do you have _any _idea how long it's been since I've gotten actual _food?"_

*I've seen you eat unseasoned tofu with relish. You don't get an opinion on food.*

"Tastes better than MRE's."

*Dirt tastes better than MRE's.*

"Point."

Watching the two of them bicker good-naturedly, Scarlett just sighed.


	7. Chapter 7

After the first week or so had passed and no one turned up dead with throwing stars lodged in various parts of their anatomy, some of the team began to relax a little. A very infinitesimally tiny fraction that mostly consisted of only giving the ex Cobra agent ten feet of clearance instead of fifteen, but it was still progress.

This was due not a little to the newly popular entertainment of watching BeachHead scream at Storm Shadow every morning at PT. Storm had earned himself quite a bit of respect from the rest of the team for taking the verbal abuse and hellacious physical exertion without blinking or complaining. It might be somewhat grudging respect on the part of many of the Joes, but still…shared pain leads to feelings of camaraderie, willingly or not.

Then there'd been Roadblock. The nineteenth time Storm had mentioned the heavy machine gunner's cooking in almost reverential tones, Roadblock had apparently decided that he enjoyed flattery no matter who it was coming from. He'd actually had a fairly civil conversation with the ninja in the rec room the other night, which had lost Ace eighty bucks; he'd had money on it being Stalker.

Ace had been in the rec room too, losing rather badly to Spirit and Dusty at darts. He'd almost dropped his handful of darts when the ninja and the machine gunner had started chatting. Then he'd decided that Storm was, in fact, just as nuts as Snake Eyes. The ninja had referred to one occasion when Roadblock and he had tangled, which had resulted in an unconscious and rather bruised ninja getting dragged back into heavily guarded custody over one of Roadblock's massive shoulders.

Storm had been _complementary_ about this. His exact words had been "Not many men your size are that fast. I wasn't expecting that kind of speed out of you…foolish of me, but it was a good hit."

Roadblock had had a smug look on his face the rest of the night. Scarlett, Ace had also noted, wasn't being openly hostile to their new teammate anymore. More _guardedly_ hostile, and she wasn't actually threatening out loud to shoot him anymore, which for her was quite a step. Ace figured this had a lot to do with the fact that Snake Eyes had been in an uncommonly good mood for the last week or so.

Slight warming up by a few Joes aside, most of them still didn't trust the man, and quite a few Joes were nursing private fantasies of revenge, chafing at the knowledge that actually acting on any of these would probably both get their ass kicked in a thoroughly humiliating fashion and earn them the Wrath of Hawk to boot.

Ace was not one of the exceptions to this rule. He, however, was anticipating very highly his very inevitable revenge. To be fair, both Wild Bill and Slip Stream were also anticipating their reassuringly certain payback. All three of the veteran pilots had some issue with the fact that for several years, Storm Shadow had more or less viewed their darling aircraft as annoyances best dealt with either via RPGs or simply jamming a _ninjato _through the fuel tanks.

Or, on that one particularly memorable occasion, casually jamming a sizable rock into the motor on the rotors of Wild Bill's favorite Tomahawk just prior to the pilot attempting to start the chopper up. The helicopter had been totaled; Wild Bill had been _livid._

Thus, "glee" was probably the closest term to what Ace felt at the prospect of taking the ninja up for live-flight equipment training. Despite some protests to the effect that he already _knew_ how to fly a plane, Hawk had been firm; Storm _would_ go through the standard qualification procedure that every new recruit was subjected to before being allowed to pilot the Tomahawks, Sky Strikers, or Ghoststrikers.

Well, standard qualification procedures and a little more 'let's make sure he's not going to kill us in our sleep' time. But the prior was what had Ace actually tapping his toe on the air strip tarmac in anticipation a little over a week after the BeachHead incident.

Storm Shadow had made fairly short work of the simulators over the last few days. The man had ungodly reflexes, which rather made up for his lack of experience on the fighter jets that G.I. Joe used. Ace had seen a _lot _of pilots train, and he'd gotten pretty good at assessing the potential of recruits. Storm Shadow was decent…just that. Like most of the Joes, he'd be good backup in a cockpit if necessary, but best kept out of dogfights or stunt shows. He wouldn't ever be a pilot of Ace's caliber, but then pilots of Ace's caliber were few and far between even in the Air Force.

When Storm Shadow showed up, he was being trailed by a small crowd of off-duty personnel. The first day of live-flight training was a highly anticipated event throughout the Pit.

Bill and Slip, who'd been chatting with Ace as they waited, grinned. Slip Stream sighed. "Lucky bastard…I'd been hoping to get him first."

"Kill him, Ace." Bill said, the barest hint of sadistic anticipatory glee in his voice. "I've got fifty on four minutes."

"I know." Ace was running the pool, after all. "And it's the lowest bet…I'm somewhat disturbed by the apparent lack of faith in my skills. You'll get your money _if _ it takes me that long."

Still twenty yards away, Storm Shadow raised his eyebrows. "I _have _flown before, you know. I don't have a weak stomach. I used to fly the CLAW gliders...those take better reflexes than one of these." A nod at the waiting Sky Striker.

Ace grinned more widely. "I think that was a _challenge,_ don't you?"

Bill nodded. "Oh, definitely. And I think he dissed your lady, Ace. You ain't gonna stand for that, are you?"

Slip scowled. "If he badmouths my baby that way, I'll eject him without a parachute."

Ace patted his plane affectionately. "It's okay, honey. We'll get back at the mean man, won't we?"

Storm Shadow shook his head, muttered something about psychotic pilots, and pulled on his flight helmet.

Fifteen minutes later, and they were four thousand feet up and at the end of the checklist. Storm had, predictably, done well enough.

Ace smirked to himself and radioed down to the ground. "Checklist finished. Going to hit the afterburners and take him for a little ride now. Over."

The snickering that came back over the radio was completely gleeful. "Roger that."

A slightly bored sigh from behind him. "Is this really necessary? It's just a _plane…"_

He was cut off mid sentence by the G-forces as Ace opened the throttle all the way and jerked the nose of the Sky Striker almost straight up.

The plane hummed almost eagerly; they screamed upwards fifteen, eighteen thousand feet. Ace _felt_ the moment when the jet almost, _almost_ stalled, and leveled them off. He opened the throttle again, and they blasted past Mach one within a few seconds.

A long loop out, fairly tame, if very, very fast. Ace hummed happily to himself. "And _that_ was ten gees and mach one point five. How are we feeling?"

"Is this _really necessary?"_ Storm sounded rather irritated.

A voice over the radio. Ace recognized Slip Stream. "He's still talking, buddy."

"I know…fixing issue." Ace turned the plane nose up again, but this time he cranked all the way back on the stick and kept it there.

The world inverted. Ace smiled out of the cockpit as the ground and sky switched places. There was a strange sort of beauty in the way sky and horizon and ground spun around you when you pulled spins and loops and rolls and other assorted fun variations on regular, boring, flat and level flight.

He flew upside-down for a few seconds, admiring the view, and then flipped them back over. "How about now? You feeling okay back there?"

"FINE." It was almost a growl, but…Ace grinned…a very slightly shaky growl.

He picked up speed again; they blasted past mach one once more, and this time Ace lovingly jockeyed the control stick _just _so…

Fighter pilot was a job that more or less required a stomach of cast iron. Barrel rolls could make most civvies puke, but fighter pilots considered them a staple maneuver. Barrel rolls at just over the speed of sound could make even the most hardened of digestive tracts rebel. Ace grinned happily as the horizon spun around them, the Sky Striker responding almost eagerly to his prompting.

He distinctly heard a pained sort of noise behind him. His grin turned wicked, and he straightened them out again. "What? Thought it was _just a plane._"

"You are utterly mad." Storm Shadow was very definitely sounding a little unhappy.

"He ain't lost it yet." Bill's voice. "Ace, you've got two minutes to get him retching if I'm gonna win here. You're flyin' like a sick toddler…you need me to come up there and show you how to do it?"

"Bite me, Bill." Ace snorted.

Stunt pilots were pretty much universally acknowledged as crazed adrenaline junkies with a death wish. Ace had been to more than a few air shows in his life, and had seen literally thousands of pilots who claimed that they were 'pretty hot stuff'. As far as he was concerned, ninety percent of them were amateurs.

"So, Storm." He said conversationally. "I've been doing some experimenting lately…in honor of your transfer to the team, I invented a new stunt _just for you, _and I think I'll show it to you now." He smiled wickedly. "I call this one 'Lets See What The Ninja Had For Breakfast'."

He slammed the control stick all the way forward. The plane went nose down, and they were screaming towards the ground at speeds that could only be described as 'ungodly'. He twisted, and they were spinning, faster and faster, the world whipping around them as they spun like a top, almost to the point of losing control all together but not quite, and at the last possible moment he pulled them out, jerked the plane nose up, hit the afterburners, and spun them again, then jerked them back and they were upside down, and then right side up, and then upside down, and they were still going at close to fifteen hundred miles an hour …

The sounds of gagging from the seat behind him were sweet, sweet victory. Wild Bill's crow of victory over the radio was estatic. "_FOUR MINUTES!_ Ace, I'll take that in large bills please, as soon as you get your ass back down here."

"What was that remark about me flying like a sick toddler, again?" Ace leveled them out and tamely headed them back for the runway.

"Okay, you ain't flyin' like a sick toddler. Maybe like my gramma."

"You're just jealous that I got him to lose it first."

"You're _sadistic."_ Storm Shadow sounded entirely miserable.

"Suck it up, spooky." Wild Bill sounded smug. "Wait 'till I get you in a Tomahawk."

That…that was _definitely_ a groan.

A few minutes later and they were back on the ground. Ace climbed down and sauntered over to the group of watching Joes with an air of extreme self-satisfaction. Slip Stream and Wild Bill emerged from the radio hut and ambled over.

Slip slapped him enthusiastically on the shoulder. "Nice…ooh, now that's an interesting color."

Ace glanced around. Storm Shadow was leaning against the Sky Striker. He'd just pulled his helmet off, and what little color was in his face was an interesting shade of pale green. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, visibly steadying himself before stalking away from the fighter jet.

"Fine." He said, apparently to thin air. "I'm _just fine, _in case anybody was wondering." He shot Ace a look. "Remind me _never _to volunteer to be your co-pilot."

Ace buffed his fingernails casually on his jacket. "What was that earlier about 'I've got a strong stomach?' Incidentally, how'd those scrambled eggs taste the second time around? You did hit the bag, right? I hate scrubbing vomit out of the upholstery."

This earned him another glare, and the ninja stalked off in the direction of the Pit.

Ace was in a _great _mood for the rest of the day.


	8. Chapter 8

Astute readers may notice that Storm Shadow gets shirtless in more than one of my fics. If you were wondering, this is completely because I like the pictures in my head when he takes his shirt off. I shall not apologize for this.

* * *

Carl Greer eyed his schedule.

Being frightened wasn't something that happened to him. He was the head doctor for the G.I. Joe team, and the truly bizarre, inexplicable, and downright frightening things he'd seen as a result had more or less inured him to fear. He'd managed to cow BeachHead into submission, had successfully out-weaseled and subdued ninja (though, to be fair, Lifeline had helped quite a bit with that. The unassuming combat medic was downright gifted in the art of wrestling patients into submission). He'd been the one to dispense antacid after the legendary gumbo incident after Gung Ho had first joined the team.

Sure, this particular situation was slightly unusual even for the Joe team. It wasn't often that Doc had to give a physical to a man who'd probably sent just about every member of the team to the infirmary and he and Lifeline's expert care at some point. But it was still just a physical, and he didn't really anticipate too many complications. He already knew that Storm Shadow was a healthy man (perfectly, now that the stitches on the ninja's shoulder had come out). You didn't have to be a doctor to see that much…the man was in really impressive shape.

Lifeline and Doc were both eyeing the door; the ninja was due in just a few minutes. Naturally, the slightly amused voice sounded just about then from _right_ behind Doc's ear.

"Let's get this over with, shall we?"

Both medics were well familiar with ninja. They had, after all, spent the last several years serving with and treating Snake Eyes. Still, that was never, _ever_ going to be not creepy. Lifeline jumped slightly higher than Doc, but then the combat medic had just about lost an arm when treating the ninja for the knife wound Scarlett had inflicted. Like any combat soldier, ninja tended to react…_explosively…_to perceived threats when abruptly woken or disoriented by medication, concussion, or shock. Even a ninja half-dead from blood loss and under the influence of painkillers could inflict a great deal of damage. And apparently suturing equipment looked a lot like a knife if your vision was hazy with medication and massive blood loss.

Thank God Snake Eyes had been there.

Doc quickly regained his composure. He eyed the shorter man and raised his eyebrows. "We do have a door, you know."

Storm Shadow just smiled that slightly smug grin. "Yes, you do."

Doc sighed. "Strip down to your shorts and get on the scale. And if you give me any problems, I'm going to have Lifeline use the big needles to draw your blood sample."

Storm raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you need a blood sample for a basic physical?"

Doc smiled slightly. It was a look that every Joe justifiably dreaded. "I won't, unless you choose to be a difficult patient."

A slow nod. "Got it." The ninja obediently stripped off his tank top and loose white pants and stepped on the scale.

Doc felt his eyebrows go up. He'd examined the man, and Lifeline had of course patched him up following Scarlett's remarkably unfriendly greeting, but he really hadn't been paying attention to anything but the knife wound. Storm had somehow avoided major scarring on any readily visible areas, but the rest of him…

Both Doc and Lifeline had stitched up Snake Eyes more than a few times after Storm Shadow and their silent commando had tangled. They knew that Snake's face was by no means the extent of the scars he carried. Snake Eyes had long maintained that he gave as good as he took when it came to his occasional viciously violent confrontations with his old friend, but now, actually looking at the results, Doc realized that Snake hadn't been exaggerating.

"I suddenly give the Cobra medics more credit." He muttered to Lifeline. There was one, a long, thin scar that Doc's practiced eyes judged to be a few years old, which looked like it had come damn close to severing Storm's spine.

"They took good care of me." Storm said dryly. "I was, after all, the Commander's favorite bodyguard. He didn't spare any expense when it came to keeping his favorite line of defense alive."

Lifeline was sliding the markers along the scale. "One seventy nine…are _all_ of those from Snake?"

A snort. "Certainly not. Enough of them, though."

Doc jotted down the man's weight. "Height?"

"Five nine." Lifeline answered.

"Thank you…have a seat, Storm." Doc waited until the ninja settled himself on the table, arms crossed. "I tried to pull your information from your military service file, but despite the fact you served in the Army, I couldn't find a record of you. I also couldn't find a birth certificate, though Snake Eyes told me that you were born in the USA."

"Of course you couldn't. I destroyed all of that information." Storm Shadow shrugged. "It isn't good for a ninja to have his specifics on file with his enemies."

Doc raised his eyebrows but didn't comment. "Fine. Date of birth?"

Basic background info took a few minutes, and then Doc and Lifeline started their poking and prodding. Predictably, the ninja scored off the charts on reflex speed. Snake Eyes regularly did the same thing, so Doc wasn't surprised by this.

Nothing was out of the ordinary. Storm Shadow was in fantastic health, and in good enough shape that Doc, who took a great deal of pride in the fact that he did, in fact, have a six-pack, rather felt flabby in comparison.

It was when they started the hearing examination that things started getting downright weird.

The whispered speech test was fairly basic…you whispered a word, and backed away and did it again until your patient couldn't hear you any longer. Usually, this meant one or two feet, or three or four if you had someone with sharp ears on the table.

By the time he was actually across the room and Storm was _still_ not having any trouble repeating back the whispered words, Doc was starting to see scientific papers in important medical journals dancing before his eyes.

Lifeline was scribbling results, looking just as keenly interested as Doc. He glanced at the taller medic. "You want me to get out the audiometer?"

"Yes." Doc said immediately. "Storm, hold still…" He peered in the ninja's ear with a light. "Internal structure _looks_ normal…are you _sure_ you could still hear me? You weren't just guessing at the words, right?"

Storm Shadow sighed. "I have the Ear that Sees. I could hear what you were saying. I can hear your heart beating right now. I can hear Lifeline's heart beating across the room, and I could tell the two of you apart in a dark room by heartbeat alone. I can hear people talking on the floor above us, and I could tell you what they are saying and exactly where they are in relation to us."

"Incredible." Doc said, mostly to himself.

"Every time I get a new doctor..." Storm muttered.

Ten minutes later, Doc was doing double takes. "Are you _sure _you can still hear the tone?"

Audiometers played a series of tones that varied in pitch and decibel. They started out loud, and you could decrease the volume and pitch until your patient signaled that he or she could no longer hear anything. Right now, by all rights no one but a German Shepherd should be able to hear the tone Doc was playing.

"Of course I am." Storm sounded mildly irritated.

Doc started scribbling frantically on a notepad, and then adjusted the volume again. "And now?"

It took two more adjustments before the ninja finally signaled that he couldn't hear the tone any longer. Subsequent tests turned up supporting and equally astounding results. Doc already had the first four pages of his dissertation mentally written.

Lifeline eyed him knowingly. "You want me to get the MRI ready to go?"

"You won't find anything." Storm Shadow said calmly. "Doctors have tried it before."

"Not with my equipment, they haven't." Doc buffed a smudge off of his glasses absently. "I've got better toys than most. You don't mind, do you? You've passed the physical…this is purely for professional curiosity."

Storm shrugged amiably. "I'm used to it."

The ninja was finally released some time later, leaving Doc and Lifeline to stare at the images on the computer screens. Lifeline frowned. "Is it just me, or does the bone configuration in his inner ear look a little..."

Doc squinted. "Off? Yes, it does. I don't know that that can account for the test results we just saw, however."

Lifeline leaned closer. "The cochlea is larger than normal, too."

"It is." Doc smiled happily. "We may be the first to report on this condition… what shall we name it?"

Lifeline was grinning. "Exceedingly rare, genetically recessive hypersensitive hearing? I'm thinking 'Steen's Syndrome."

"We don't know it's genetically recessive." Doc frowned. "And I seem to notice a distinct lack of my name in there."

"It's _got_ to be recessive." Lifeline shrugged. "Otherwise it wouldn't be this rare, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. I'm betting that ninja clans breed for this kind of trait…and there's probably been enough intermarriage between clans over the last thousand or so years that most ninja clans are going to have a few carriers of the genome. I'm guessing an individual who exhibited such a trait would be considered highly desirable breeding stock to ninja."

Doc considered that. "I should probably leave out the part about ninja clans in my paper."

"I'd replace 'ninja clans' with 'highly secretive ethnic group'." Lifeline nodded.

"Probably a good idea."


	9. Chapter 9

It LIVES! See? I haven't totally forgotten about my other unfinished fics. Vendetta still has another chapter or two to go, but I'll feel slightly less guilty for leaving you at the point I'm currently at for a week or so than halfway through a battle scene.

And I haven't forgotten 'Throwdown' either. That'll be updated pretty soon, I promise. I've also got a few requested pieces that will be going up soon. (Karama9, General Zargon, sorry you've waited so long. You've the patience of gods.)

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Alonzo Wilkinson , called 'Lonzo by his friends and family and 'Stalker' by his comrades in the Pit, knew that money had been lost by several parties when he had given Storm Shadow…_Tommy…_a rather chilly reception.

The man had once been his friend, true. He'd been under Stalker's command in the LRRP he'd met both Snake and Tommy in, and he'd been one of the two most insanely talented scouts and combatants Stalker had ever met. The other being Snake Eyes.

In retrospect, that made a lot of sense, and had Tommy _not_ been hiding the fact that he was a damned _ninja, _he'd probably have topped the charts. At the time, anyway…hell, the man could probably have been his _own_ LRRP squad. Now, after Snake had trained in Japan with Tommy's crazy ninja family…

If they had to do 'nam all over again, they could send in the two ninja and win the damned war, in all probability. Good as they were, Viet Cong still weren't a match for ninja when it came to nighttime fighting and stealth in areas with as much cover as a jungle offered.

Hell, Snake and Storm could both make themselves scarce when there _wasn't _heavy cover. How in the name of God a man who habitually wore all black could vanish from sight in a white-painted hallway, Stalker would never figure out.

Snake Eyes seemed thrilled to have Tommy back on the side of the US of A. But then, Snake and Tommy had always been friends…in 'nam, Tommy had been pretty much the only one who could actually get Snake to talk at all. The tall blond Ranger would actually carry on conversations with the shorter, frighteningly energetic Asian man. Stalker had known that Snake had come to consider him a friend when he'd asked a question and Snake had answered with more than two words, so hearing him actually respond when Tommy talked had been pretty much a sure sign that the two slightly psychotic Rangers were close.

On the Joe team…well, when they'd first figured out exactly _who_ the mysterious white-clad, masked ninja agent working for Cobra Commander was, Stalker had rather felt personally betrayed. Nothing to how Snake felt, of course…the bad blood between the two ninja had led to legendary amounts of blood being spilled on both sides, and had resulted in some of the most spectacular displays of skillful, graceful, bloody knock-down-drag-out violence any of the Joes would ever see.

Despite this, Snake and Tommy seemed to have unconditionally forgiven one another as soon as Tommy had turned up and offered his services to the Joe team and the complicated situation had been explained. Stalker wasn't quite so quick to forgive.

It was bad enough to lose men and women you'd served with and considered friends. It was worse to discover that you'd lost them to the sword of a man you'd once trusted, whatever the circumstances.

When they didn't get killed in their sleep (or get killed while awake, for that matter), and as time passed, however… well, it was hard _not_ to like Tommy, really. For all his insane ninja weirdness, casual competence when it came to violence, and fondness for appearing right behind people without warning just to watch them jump, there was a reason Stalker had been friends with him before. Tommy was a cautious sort, but if you managed to get in his good graces, he was generally amiable and friendly. (Though if you managed to irritate him or, god forbid, get on his _bad_ side… well, for the love of all that was holy _watch your back.) _True, he was rather given to dry, dark humor and occasionally blisteringly caustic sarcasm, but even this was actually rather amusing so long as you weren't the target. Tommy's sense of humor actually often served as a necessary outlet for a situation…the man's snarking had gotten their squad through some bad patches in 'nam.

And once he'd made a promise, you'd always been able to count on him following through to the letter.

He _had_ made a promise to Hawk. On his clan's mark, no less. Stalker was pretty sure that Tommy would rather burn the tattoo off his arm than break something like that. Actually, breaking such a vow might involve ritual application of red-hot objects, come to think of it. Lord knew that ninja were crazy enough for something like that.

It was this reluctant realization that he _wanted _to have his old friend back, even if he couldn't quite bring himself to forgive and forget that was at the forefront of Stalker's mind a few days after the (wholly entertaining) plane incident. When he opened the gym door and spotted Tommy on the weight bench, he sighed and didn't turn and leave. (The ninja was bench pressing at least a good fifty pounds more than he weighed, incidentally. He wasn't a particularly large man, but Stalker had learned long ago that Tommy was a _hell_ of a lot stronger than he looked.)

There were a few greenshirts also using the equipment. All four were keeping as far as physically possible from Storm while still staying in the room.

Stalker draped his towel over one shoulder, sighed again, and walked over. "You need a spotter?"

Tommy easily racked the bar and sat up. "No…I was just finishing. Thank you, though." He eyed Stalker thoughtfully. "Three weeks…I'd thought it'd be longer before you decided to speak to me."

Stalker shrugged. "I was kinda surprised you didn't press the issue."

Tommy sighed...was that _guilt?_ "Let's just say I really didn't blame you. It's been a long time since 'nam. I've certainly broken the trust you put in me then. I've done enough that I really wouldn't blame you for hating me for the rest of your life."

"Yeah. You have." Stalker agreed. "Wasn't fun, figuring out who the Commander's ninja was. I didn't believe it at first… 'till I saw your tattoo." He grimaced. "Even Scarlett couldn't get Snake to talk for about three days after he realized who you were. I expected better from you. You were a good man."

Tommy winced. "I deserved that, I suppose. If I could I go back in time and change things, I would. I don't know if I'll ever be able to redeem my honor…or make up for what I've done to you and my brother."

Tommy had never been overly given to brooding…at least, not as much as Snake Eyes. But Stalker knew that expression; that was full on self-flagellating, scowling, angry-at-yourself, scary-intense internal turmoil.

Psyche Out had had several appointments with Tommy, Stalker knew. He also knew that when the psychiatrist had actually managed to corner the ninja, he'd gotten exactly zero information out of the completely blank-faced and suddenly monosyllabic Storm Shadow. Psyche Out, somewhat used to such behavior from Snake Eyes (and, indeed, most of the team), had been heard muttering something about 'stubborn damned black-ops types'.

The psychiatrist would have _killed _to see what Stalker was seeing on Tommy's face right now; it was perhaps this that that made the difference. Stalker sighed yet again. "Least you're moving in the right direction, man. It's good to have you on our side again."

Tommy's eyebrows went up. He gave Stalker another appraising sort of look. "Thank you, 'Lonzo."

Stalker almost smiled. "You know, I never did tell my wife that I had to fight a ninja that used to be one of the men under my command. She already thinks I'm a little crazy."

Tommy's eyebrows rose again. "What's this I hear about you having a few ankle-biters now?"

Stalker _did _grin at this. "Two little boys. Smartest kids I've ever known…but then, I'm biased."

"Slightly." Tommy smiled. "Congratulations, by the way."

"Thanks."

They spent a few more minutes talking as Tommy helpfully spotted Stalker's own set on the weight bench. Stalker had to admit that it felt…well, it felt good to have Tommy back on the right side. By the time Storm left him and the (distinctly relieved) greenshirts to themselves, Stalker had, if not _quite_ forgiven his old friend, at least made a significant move in that direction.

People made mistakes. Tommy's had been perhaps worse than most, but then he _was _human, and he _was_ trying to make amends now. And, damn him, he was still able to make Stalker snigger when he verbally eviscerated someone. The fact that the recent target of that legendarily caustic sarcasm had been none other than Cobra Commander just made it that much better.

Really. "Screaming egomaniac who gets off on his own reflection and reptiles" was the best character summary Stalker had ever heard of their slightly unbalanced opponent. Even one of the greenshirts had snickered. Somewhat nervously and he'd been immediately shushed by his friends, but still.

It _was _good to have Tommy back.


	10. Chapter 10

I'm updating a fic. Somewhere, Satan is putting on a parka and wondering where the hell these snow clouds came from.

Really though…I've had a looooong period of writers block when it came to my Joe fics, except for a few crackbunnies. A few of my original pieces got some time put into them, though, so I'm not really too sorry.

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"Here." Tommy carefully marked an X in red pencil on the map spread out on Hawk's desk.

Hawk eyed the map thoughtfully. "The middle of the Venezuelan rain forest?"

"You asked where the Commander keeps getting steel and fuel for his vehicles." Tommy tapped the mark with the tip of the pencil. "Right here. He did some covert prospecting a decade or so back-before he hired me-and found oil deposits and iron ore in this area. Bought it through a company owned by Extensive Enterprises. There's a surface facility that does some legitimate exporting of both petroleum and steel products for appearances, but the main operation is all underground."

"You've been there?"

"Year or so back. Production was down. The Commander decided to put the fear of God into his employees. He killed a few managers, shot a few random employees, installed a new project overseer, and threatened to send me after him if he didn't make quota." Storm grimaced.

Hawk raised his eyebrows. "And?"

"He made quota."

"Ah." Hawk leaned back in his chair. "Defenses?"

"Two platoons of infantry soldiers for a total of a hundred men. Six HISS tanks with crew. Fourteen F.A.N.G choppers with crew. The river here is patrolled by modified Moray attack boats. There are eight machine gun nests hidden in the forest, and six snipers on duty at all times."

"I take it the snipers move?"

"Daily."

"Anything else you can tell me?"

Storm Shadow shrugged. "It's been a year since I was there. Codes, shifts…they'll all be different. Even the defensive situation might have changed. I'd recommend a full recon before any offensive move is made."

"Agreed." Hawk sipped at his coffee. "Thank you. Dismissed."

The ninja saluted and slipped out the door.

Hawk sipped his coffee again, examining the map, and paged Breaker.

"Sir?" Breaker's voice crackled over the 'comm almost immediately.

"I need satellite photos of the following coordinates." Hawk rattled off a series of numbers. "Best resolution you have. If you find any sort of industrial activity in the area, I want a full background check of the corporation involved."

"Sir." A long pause. "Sir, permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"Is this a tip from our new 'team member?'"

Hawk could actually hear the quotation marks around the last two words. "Are you questioning my judgment, Corporal?"

"No sir! It's just…"

"You have your orders, Corporal." Hawk cut the tech off. "I want photos and intel, and I want them right now. Go do your job. Leave worrying about the ninja to me."

"Yessir." Breaker still sounded slightly doubtful, but also completely unwilling to pursue the matter with his CO.

"Good. Report to me as soon as you have anything."

"Yessir."

Hawk set his 'comm aside and pulled a stack of paperwork his way. "Snake Eyes? If you'd like to get yourself out of my ventilation ducts and into my office, I'd appreciate it."

He was only on the second funding request form when the office door opened and a silent figure in black snapped to attention. "Ah. Snake. At ease. Have a seat."

Snake Eyes appropriated the chair on the other side of the desk. *You didn't hear me?*

"No." Hawk smiled to himself at the slightly quizzical tilt of the ninja's head. "We'll call it an educated guess. I take it you heard and saw everything?"

A nod.

"When Breaker finishes gathering information, I will likely be sending you, Beach, Recondo, and Storm Shadow to recon the area. If Tommy is right about this, we could cripple Cobra fairly significantly by hitting this base."

*Yes sir.* Snake Eyes…Hawk recognized that slight wrinkling of the black mask. That was a _grin._

"I thought you'd like that. Dismissed."

Snake snapped to his feet, saluted, and slid out. Hawk returned to his coffee and paperwork, feeling pleased with himself.

Three birds with one stone. Keeping his commando happy, forcing his Sergeant Major and new ninja to work together, and gaining potentially vital information that could help them destroy an important Cobra facility.

He always _had _been good at multitasking.

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Breaker cracked his gum, chomped for a second, and cracked it again.

_Tickititktitkt _click.

Huh.

Military satellites had _great _resolution. As a result, Breaker could see not only that there was indeed what looked like an oil drilling facility at the coordinates Hawk had given him, but could see the company logo painted on the side of a large square concrete building.

It _looked _innocuous enough. HAE Corp; a quick background check on the company turned up only boringly normal and non-illegal endeavors. Breaker went and got himself another cup of coffee.

It took him fifteen minutes to hack into the company servers. It took him five to find the parent corporation of HAE Corp was a division of Global Energy Development. Which was also boringly normal.

Breaker sighed to himself. He'd never say anything to Hawk's face (Ever. He _liked _living.) but he personally had some misgivings when it came to trusting the intel of their recent enemy.

He absently cracked his gum again. Global Energy had better encryption than HAE. It took him seventeen minutes to hack in.

It took thirty seconds for his eyebrows to his hairline.

Global Energy was financed by a man by the name of Fred Acorb. Breaker barely restrained himself from facepalming; Tomax and Xamot really had a weird thing about spelling names backward.

He glanced at the clock, and was mildly surprised to find that it was almost dinnertime. He reached for his 'comm.

"General Hawk? I've got something."

"Very good. Full report, my office, fifteen minutes."

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Whenever Daniel LeClare, better known to his teammates as Recondo, had to leave the muggy heat of his beloved South American jungles, he was always vaguely disappointed. Sure, the Pit wasn't Wisconsin in the winter (he shuddered at _that _thought; out of the whole team, only Dusty really understood his complete and utter loathing of weather cold enough to freeze water. And his mother wondered why he was so reluctant to come home for Christmas.) but it still wasn't the Amazon.

Therefore, when Hawk had summoned him, he'd been almost gleeful. He was at his best when in the jungle, and if Hawk was asking for him in particular, odds were in his favor that he was about to be deployed somewhere hot and damp.

He was less gleeful when he found out who he'd be going on this particular mission with.

Four hours after their briefing, sitting in the back of a transport plane, listening to Beach Head snoring softly and watching Snake Eyes quintuple-checking all his gear, (was there such a thing as obsessive-compulsive gun cleaning disorder? Because if there was, Snake Eyes had it) his misgivings hadn't dissipated much.

Storm Shadow was sitting silently, carefully waxing a bowstring. (damp weather and rain were hard on bowstrings, so this was a reasonable precaution. Recondo had hung around with enough tribesmen to be pretty well versed in archery)

It had been a few months since the ninja had turned up. No one had turned up with shuriken stuck through vital bits yet, but Recondo still had vivid memories of watching a ghostly figure in red-stained white carve his way through four greenshirts before getting bodily tackled by an avatar of death in a black bodysuit.

If Snake Eyes hadn't turned up at that particular moment, Recondo had no doubt that he would have died in that gutted Aztec temple too. Things like staring death in the certain bloody face tended to stick with you.

(Recondo still had a somewhat personal grudge against Cobra for the temple thing. It was a crying shame; gorgeous old ruins like that, utterly destroyed just because Cobra Commander had liked the snake motif carved on the exterior walls. The Jugglers had gotten their panties in a bunch over the Joes using as much C4 as they had, but there hadn't been anything left of the inside of the temple anyway.)

Personally, Recondo wouldn't be surprised if this was a wild goose chase. Or failing that, a setup to betray and either capture or kill himself, Beach, and Snake.

To sum it up in as few words as possible, he wasn't happy. He was getting sent into the Amazon rain forest, and he wasn't happy about it.

He hadn't thought that would _ever _happen.


	11. Chapter 11

They switched from the transport plane to a helicopter on an aircraft carrier stationed in the Gulf of Mexico. This made Wild Bill much happier; though the Texan could fly anything with wings, choppers were his first and truest love.

Breaker had located a few possible landing sites, all several miles away from their target facility. Bill set them down in a clearing manufactured by some local farmer cutting and burning down the trees and undergrowth; several cows hightailed it to the furthest edge of the clearing and then turned, eyeing them and chewing assorted plant parts meditatively.

Recondo eyed the surroundings with a vague look of disgust as they debarked, shouldering packs of gear. "Slash and burn." He shook his head. "Destroys more of the Amazon…"

"You sound like Footloose." Wild Bill leaned out of the chopper. "Good luck, and try not to get killed. You need out in a hurry, just call me."

As the chopper lifted off, the four Joes hurriedly vanished into the trees. The cows went back to browsing, forgetting about the whole incident almost immediately.

Safely hidden from any curious farmer's eyes in the dense growth of the forest, the four men paused for a moment to go over things one last time before starting out to recon their target.

It was hot, and the air was humid. Snake Eyes was sweating, despite the fact that the material of his skinsuit was engineered to be breathable and to wick moisture away.

He didn't like jungles. He'd spent enough time in them...Cobra Commander had a fondness for inaccessible bases constructed in remote locations of extreme climate, and before that he'd spent months in the dense jungles of Vietnam…but he really didn't like them. Actually, some not-so-fond memories from his LRRP tours were part of the _reason_ he didn't like jungles.

The dense growth and close-set trees of a rain forest did afford a ninja an incomparable opportunity for concealment and stealth, though.

Beach looked utterly indifferent to the environment. Recondo had the same gleam in his eyes that Dusty got whenever they found themselves somewhere with sand dunes.

Beach's olive drab and brown blended into the background with ease. Recondo's jungle cammies mimicked the play of light and shadow on the undergrowth almost perfectly. Snake Eyes knew that in his black skinsuit, he could blend into the shadows with almost no effort.

And then there was Tommy, sitting on a fallen tree with a map on one thigh, pointing out important landmarks around their target. The white of his _gi _was almost jarring against the greens and browns of the forest.

Recondo was plainly thinking the same thing. He leaned close to Snake and whispered.

"Why the hell does he always wear white?" The jungle trooper seemed almost contemptuous. "We're in the damn Amazon. It's not exactly practical."

Snake Eyes lifted one shoulder. *His father always wore white on missions. And he can hear you perfectly well.*

"His father?" A moment of silence. "Yeah, I suppose he did have to have a father. I always kinda thought of him as not really _human, _you know? Why'd his father…?"

*Ask Tommy.* Snake shrugged again. *I never met the man.*

"Because it just gets too easy otherwise." Tommy's voice cut in. "Recondo, when I was last here the patrolling squads were having trouble with one of the local indigenous tribes. A few vipers got shot. Hoti, I believe they were called. You know them?"

Recondo perked up. "This would be their territory. I speak a little Yuwana. Trouble with them, you say?"

A nod. "Several vipers got shot. Those people are _surgeons _with blowguns. What kind of poison do they use?" Tommy eyed Recondo with keen curiosity. "I've seen it stop hearts in less than a minute_._"

"Poison dart frogs. The Hoti usually prefer to just move on rather than fight, though. What…"

"People generally get irritated," Tommy rolled up the map, "When you capture a few of their friends and set them to forced labor." A disgusted snort. "I can't say I felt sorry for those vipers, really. Anyway, don't get hit by any of those darts. I don't have an antidote for that poison on me. If you do get shot at by them and manage not to die, try to save me the darts. I believe we all know what we're doing. Shall we?"

* * *

Several hours after a helicopter had landed in a cow pasture, a rather bored Viper was walking his beat at the perimeter of the secured area around the mine facility.

He paused at the far end of his patrol, glanced around, took his helmet off, and extracted a cigarette from behind his ear. They weren't supposed to smoke on duty, but that rule was never enforced so long as you made an effort to be discreet.

As nicotine filtered into his bloodstream, he eyed the boggy, marshy swamp just off the well-worn guard path with distaste. This whole damn country was filled with swamps, mud, creatures that would bite your head off, bizarre parasites, spiders the size of his damn head, and mosquitoes that you needed a sniper rifle to put down. Plus, of course, land leeches and flesh-eating fish.

_Two more months. _He sighed and flicked the butt of his cigarette out into a particularly muddy patch overhung with vines and ferns, hopefully burning some form of bloodthirsty parasite to death in the process. _Two more months, and I get a transfer. I don't even care where they put me, so long as it doesn't have ten pound spiders and rain every damn day._

He gave the mud one last disgusted look and turned around, heading back the other way on his beat. Twelve more rounds….quarter mile up, quarter mile back, at fifteen minutes for a full round…and his shift would be up.

_What kind of sadistic place has leeches on land, anyway? _He sighed again and stumped off.

He never knew just how lucky he was. Behind him, a particularly thick patch of ferns moved; two sharp brown eyes watched every movement of the viper's retreating back.

Beach Head grinned to himself. Ninja weren't the only ones who could sneak. He shot over the narrow path with a speed that was downright shocking (he wasn't as big as Roadblock, but he wasn't a small man either) and almost immediately vanished into the scenery again.

He touched the communicator in his ear. "Ah'm inside the perimeter."

"Ah, good. I was wondering when you'd catch up." Storm Shadow sounded almost cheerful.

Beach ground his teeth. _Smug bastard. I'll run that grin off of his face yet._

"Not that many guards." He scowled; it made their job easier, but incompetence and laziness never failed to irritate him. "And those they've got are bored and slacking."

"Makes it easy." Storm still sounded cheerful, like he was downright enjoying himself. "I haven't found any snipers, but I'm guessing that they'll still have some on the upper levels of the building itself. They've gotten lax since I was here last. I don't think they know that I'm working for General Hawk now."

Beach snorted to himself. Quietly.

The tapping of morse code. *Two boats on river. Four men each. Heavily armed.*

"That's the same, then." A long stretch of silence. Beach Head slunk his way past a second guard. This one looked marginally more alert, but it didn't help much. Beach Head was an Army Ranger; enemies only saw him when he wanted them to.

It was always so much easier to just kill the guards. He glared at the next one from underneath the moss-covered, vine-draped, half-rotten branches of a fallen tree. It'd be so easy…wait until he turned, pop up behind him, break his neck, drag body into undergrowth…

But no, this was a recon mission. Sneakiness. Violence would come later. Possibly with explosions.

He grinned to himself. _I love my job._


End file.
